The
mood at the Chrysler stamping plant in Warren, Mich., is generally dour
these days. Most workers are unhappy about recently imposed, mandatory
10-hour shifts and Saturday work without overtime pay.They are noticeably tired, especially those on the “C crew,” who work
two days on evening shift (4 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.) and two days on day
shift (5:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.). On March 11, the company imposed this
schedule on most of the workers — unfortunately with the acquiescence of
the International leadership of the United Auto Workers.The frowns turned to smiles, however, when workers learned that their
fired co-worker, Alex Wassell, would be reinstated. Wassell was
suspended on March 1 and the suspension was later converted to a
discharge after he helped organize and lead a protest against the
oppressive schedules. Management claimed he violated Code of Conduct 22:
“engaging in, participating in, aiding or approving conduct
constituting or appearing to constitute a conflict with the interest of
the Company.”This charge was based on statements allegedly made to the Detroit
News suggesting that the schedules would hurt morale, which might affect
quality. When the News first covered the firing, Chrysler spokeswoman
Jodi Tinson claimed that Wassell had leaked quality documents from the
Warren Truck Assembly Plant, which is next door to the Warren Stamping
Plant. Later retracting this blatantly false statement, Tinson made a
second false claim, saying that Wassell had made statements about
production problems at the assembly plant. Subsequently, the company
stated only that Wassell had violated Code of Conduct 22.Not only at Warren Stamping, but at other Chrysler plants and at Ford and General Motors, workers were outraged over the firing.At WSP over $4,000 was collected to help Wassell with living expenses
and, if necessary, the costs of legal action. Workers who had never met
him helped with the fund drive and gave generously. “He fought for us,”
was how one worker explained the strong feelings of solidarity.UAW Local 869 grieved the discharge and on April 17 the company gave
Wassell his job back. He returned to work on the hated C Crew schedule,
where his co-workers gave him a warm welcome.Wassell is still fighting for back pay, having lost almost seven
weeks’ wages. Chrysler workers will be angry if the company refuses to
make him whole. “Everybody at Jeep says that Alex should get his damn
back pay,” a Toledo worker told this writer. “Right now!”Martha Grevatt is a 25-year Chrysler worker and a member of UAW Local 869.

Articles copyright 1995-2013 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this
notice is preserved

Iraq is very important but I think Martha Grevatt's is as well. I hope you agree.

Thursday, April 25, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, curfews and
vehicle bans are imposed, armed clashes between rebels and federal
forces break out, the press is s skittish about explaining how this
whole situation arrived, Kevin Drum shows his tacky side (again) by
using the dead and the wounded of Hawija to try to score cheap political
points, and so much more.

Iraq is in crisis mode. No one's helped by false 'facts.' This, from World Bulletin,
is wrong, "Thousands of Sunnis have been protesting since December,
venting
frustrations building up since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the
empowerment of Iraq's Shi'ite majority through the ballot box."
Protests have been going on since December. If you leave out Moqtada's
followers who have participated from time to time, you can paint it as
just Sunni. But that's not the problem. You can't pin down a problem if
you can't be honest.

"The empowerment of Iraq's Shi'ite majority through the ballot box"?
What have you been smoking? Quil Lawrence and all the other liars told
us about that, remember? Told us about it before the ballots were
counted. But, the ballots did get counted. And the 2010 election
didn't support the premise one bit.

Who came in first? Not Nouri's State of Law -- a Shi'ite collection.
Iraqiya came in first. It's often wrongly identified as Sunni by the
press. Ayad Allawi, the head of Iraqiya, is Shi'ite. Iraqiya surprised
the know-nothing press by besting Nouri's State of Law.

They misread 2009 elections and were sure they knew what was going to
happen in 2010. Which is how you got, the day after the election, Quil
Lawrence on NPR raving about how Nouri's State of Law won by a large
measure. Didn't happen.

In 2009, one of the elements in the data appeared to be that voters were
rejecting the sectarian identity. That wouldn't have been a surprise.
The sectarian identity was seen by many as something imposed on Iraqis
by the US after the start of the war. Even those who want to quibble
over that can generally agree that the US fostered that sectarian
identity and encouraged it.

The 2010 elections repeated the pattern. Iraqis were seeking a national
identity (as they had prior to the start of the illegal war). There
are numerous reasons for this -- most of which we've repeatedly gone
into while the know-nothing press has refused to do their job -- but the
point is that Iraqiya won.
SOme in the press want to knock the win by insisting it wasn't big
enough. If you win a track race by a-half-a-second, you won that race.
If you win a US Senate race by one vote, you won that race.

If the vote was close, you might ask for a recount. Which Nouri did,
stomping his feet and whining as is usually the case for the overgrown
baby.

But even after the recounts, Iraqiya won. It was a new Iraq, that's
what it presented. Not an occupied Iraq, not an Iraq controlled by the
fundamentalist thugs. It was an Iraq made up of Sunnis and Shi'ites and
anyone else who wanted to join, it was men and women and the women
weren't decoration. It's slogan could have been "We are today's Iraq."
And that's what the voters embraced.

So, no, 2010 was not about "the empowerment of Iraq's Shi'ite majority through the ballot box."

The votes went with Iraqiya. Here's what happened -- and it matters and
the people have said so, they said so this year, they said so in 2012
and they said so in 2011. At some damn point, you either admit you
don't care about what you're writing or you start listening to what the
people are actually saying.

Per the Constitution, Iraqiya had first shot at the post of Prime
Minister. How it works in Iraq, confusing to many Americans, the prime
minister-designate is decided by who has the most seats in the
Parliament. The prime minister-designate is a post that lasts no longer
than 30 days.

During those 30 days, the designate has to be able to form a Cabinet.
Failure to do so within thirty days means someone else is named prime
minister-designate by the president of Iraq. This is a full Cabinet --
another element that's too hard for the press to grasp. If it was a
partial or almost Cabinet there wouldn't be a 30 day deadline. The 30
day deadline is to prove, as one of the writers of the Constitution now
in the US explained to me, that you can govern by consensus, you can
build consensus. So you nominate people for your Cabinet and the
Parliament approves of these people. And then you move from prime
minister-designate to prime minister. Or, if you fail to build
consensus, if Parliament shoots down a nominee and you don't manage to
pull together the Cabinet in 30 days, someone else is named prime
minister-designate.

Now Barack Obama couldn't support democracy. That's bad enough but he
and his staff were so stupid that they didn't even realize how to rig
the process.

Bully Boy Bush wanted Nouri in 2006 (he rejected Ibrahim al-Jaffari --
some pin that decision on Condi Rice, doesn't matter Bush was the
ultimate vote on that). In 2010, A Problem From Hell Samantha Power
insisted that the US had to stay with Nouri. This was based in part on
the fact that the idiot is f**ked-up beyond repair and also because
she's a liar who believes in manipulation and not honesty. (Is it any
wonder that she'd end up with Cass I-Love-Propaganda Sunstein?) Her failings aren't the issue once Barack adopts her position. Like Bush, he's ultimately responsible.

I'm not endorsing ignoring the will of the people, but if you're brazen
enough to do that, have the damn sense to do it in a way that doesn't
make the people feel cheated.

What does that mean? After 2010 elections, the US government spread a
lot of cash around Iraq and made a lot of verbal promises to get The
Erbil Agreement.

That was always unnecessary. They still could have rigged it and could
have done so in a way that still followed the country's Constitution.
Have President Jalal Talabani name Ayad Allawi prime
minister-designate. Use the same cash and the same verbal promises to
ensure that he didn't get a full Cabinet. Parliament rejected one or
two nominees and the 30 days had expired. Then Jalal could have named
Nouri al-Maliki to be prime minister-designate.

That would have followed the Constitution, it would have appeared to
honor the will of the people. It certainly wouldn't have created the
hostilities that Barack's 'three-dimensional chess' did.

They wanted to rig the process and, suffering from the Freudian
compulsion of a crook to confess, apparently they wanted it known.

So when Nouri refused to allow the process to move forward -- let's
explain that. In January 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as US
President. Following the end of the recounts, April 2010, it was time
for a prime minister-designate to be named, for members of Parliament to
be sworn in and hold sessions. Nouri refused. It was as if Bully Boy
Bush announced January 1, 2009, "I'm not leaving the White House." And
Barack's White House backed up Nouri.

They begged the press -- which was eager to go along -- to downplay what
was happening. Some in the press were appealed to under the pretense
of, "This is such a thorny issue, we really need to think about how
explosive this could be." So reality was downplayed. Explosive? Maybe
it would have been. But you can't downplay an explosion. You may be
able to push it back but it will go off.

We called it a "political stalemate" here and were the first. After
three months it began to be a popular term. For over eight months,
Nouri refused to step down. That takes us to November. The US has been
bribing and promising the political blocs all along. Nouri is the
White House's choice. That's become obvious to everyone involved in
Iraq.

It was also obvious to many in the press leading to humiliating moments for Barack like in when the Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality."

While he was taking his licks on the international stage, he had US
officials telling the leaders of the Iraqi political blocs, as the US
brokered a contract known as The Eribl Agreement, "This has lasted eight
months already, Nouri could hold out for another eight months. Do the
right thing here, be the bigger person, put Iraq first. It really
doesn't matter who has 'prime minister.' It's going to have to be a
power-sharing government because State of Law didn't win. So just give
him the post of prime minister and we'll write up in this contract and
we'll put what you want in the contract to and it will be a legally
binding contract with the full backing of the US government."

Before it was signed, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Australia November 8, 2010 and stated:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Probably over the course of the
last eight months, we've had many indications that they were close to an
agreement, they were on the brink of government formation, they had
worked out their power-sharing arrangements only not to see that come to
fruition. But it is fair to say that we have been consistently urging
the Iraqis to have an inclusive government that reflects the interests
and needs of the various segments of the population, the there had to be
legitimate power-sharing amongst different groups and individuals. And
that is what we hope at the end of this process [. . .] will be the
result of all of their negotiation.

Today, meetings continued. Jomana Karadsheh (CNN) reminds, "Leading
up to Monday's meeting, officials had said they were close to
completing an agreement, but remarks made by a number of the leaders
indicated that they have yet to address key sticking points that remain
unresolved ahead of this week's parliament session." And Raheem Salman and Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) point out, "If they fail to strike a deal, the stalemate could drag on for months." Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reports
the US is pressuring Kurds to step aside regarding the presidency so
that someone from Iraqiya can be president -- Fadel names US Senators
Joe Lieberman and John McCain (in person in Baghdad) and US President
Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden -- and that Nouri "is trying
to garner the backing he needs [from Iraqi politicians] to keep his post
without ceding any of his power. Maliki emerged as the likeliest
candidate for the top job in the new government when he secured the
support of the Sadrists, a populist Shiite political movement opposed to
the U.S. presence here." BBC News reports
that Allawi and Tareq al-Hashemi did not show for today's meet up
(al-Hashemi is also a member of Iraqiya as well as Iraq's Sunni Vice
President) and that "[a]nother issue still to be resolved is whether
parliament will meet on Thursday as previously announced." Sammy Ketz (AFP) reports that Iraq's Shi'ite Vice President, Adel Abdel Mehdi, walked out of today's meeting. Alsumaria TV reports
that MP Saifya Al Suhail spoke out about the absence of women present
in the deal making and that she stated, "A democratic Iraq cannot be
built without women contribution to the political decision." Mazin Yahya (AP) adds,
"Producing a deal by Thursday's scheduled parliamentary session will be
difficult and while legislators have watched other deadlines come and
go, there is a marked sense of urgency about meeting this
court-appointed deadline to hold the session." So, reports indicate,
day two was actually less productive than day one since all players were
not present and no big announcement was made. When this was originally
planned, it was thought it would be three days with main principles
participating for the first two days only -- during which time, it was
promoted, all the big points would be ironed out. That does not appear
to have happened. Especially when Alsumaria TV is reporting that
Iraqiya stated today "that the possibility of withdrawing is still
open".

Martin Chulov (Guardian) reports
one hiccup in the process today involved Ayad Allawi who US President
Barack Obama phoned asking/pleading that he accept the deal because "his
rejection of post would be a vote of no confidence". Ben Lando, Sam Dagher and Margaret Coker (Wall St. Journal) confirm
the phone call via two sources and state Allawi will take the post --
newly created -- of chair of the National Council On Higher Policy: "Mr.
Obama, in his phone call to Mr. Allawi on Thursday, promised to throw
U.S. weight behind the process and guarantee that the council would
retain meaningful and legal power, according to the two officials with
knowledge of the phone call." So all is well and good and . . .
Ooops!!!! Lando, Dagher and Coker file an update, Iraqiya wasn't happy and walked out of the session. Prashant Rao (AFP) reports
that "a dispute erupted in the Council of Representatives chamber when
the mostly Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc argued that the agreement they had
signed on to was not being honoured, prompting the bloc's MPs to storm
out. [. . .] Specifically, Iraqiya had called for three of their
lawmakers, barred for their alleged ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath
party, to be reinstated before voting for a president."

Barack was deeply involved. Don't pretend otherwise now. And don't pretend that Sunnis are frustrated by "the
empowerment of Iraq's Shi'ite majority through the ballot box." That is
an utter lie. And it does not one damn thing to explain what's
happening on the ground today. Now
we're going to move a lot quicker and if you need remedial, the links
to the archives are to the right, scroll down. We don't have the time
or space to be pulling each day to explain with citations to everyone
who forgot, or never paid attention, what happened.In
January of 2011, Nouri's Cabinet was still not complete. The Erbil
Agreement was extra-Constitutional. It went around the Constitution.
Suddenly, the Constitution was trashed. It no longer mattered if a
Nouri had a full Cabinet or not. Nouri's whores in the press, there are
so many, assured you that this was temporary and that Nouri would soon
nominate people to be the Minister of Interior (over the federal
police), the Minister of Defense (over the military) and the Minister of
National Security. That never happened. Ayad Allawi called it a
power-grab back then and he was right and the press whores were wrong.

Last July, Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observed,
"Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has struggled to forge a lasting
power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions,
including the ministers of defense, interior and national security,
while his backers have also shown signs of wobbling support." That remains true to this day. Those posts are empty.In
2011, the people do not believe that the government is working. By the
end of Februrary 2011, there are mass protests. The Arab Spring or
'Arab Spring' (a media fascination with Cairo that never really
translated into support or even interest in protesters in other areas)
was sweeping the region and tossing out politicians. Nouri feared he
might lose the post the US government had given him twice now. Jobs,
he'd create them. Public services, he'd improve them. Abuse and
corruption? He would address it. Give him 100 days.Cleric
and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr appears to have matured over the
years and today plays it very wisely in public. That was not true in
February 2011 when Nouri begged and pleaded with Moqtada to call off the
protests. Moqtada called on his people to go home and give Nouri 100
days. Other Iraqis continued protesting. No surpries -- we said it
would happen repeatedly before it did -- 100 days came and went and
Nouri didn't do a damn thing. Nouri makes empty promises -- over and
over -- and then doesn't keep them. Apparently the February 2011
promise in an AFP interview that he wouldn't seek a third term as
prime minister is one of those as well. He had to make that promise
then because protests were rolling Iraq.By
the time the 100 days ends, we're in the summer of 2011. This is when
Moqtada, the KRG (that's President Jalal Talabani, KRG President Massoud
Barzani and others) and Iraqiya go public demanding that The Erbil
Agreement be implemented. All that happened was Nouri got to be prime
minister. Nouri refused to honor it. That was obvious when the
December 2010 census in Kirkuk was immediately called off by the end of
November. He lied the way he always does.And
Ayad Allawi never got the post he was promised. This is the promise
not just in The Erbil Agreement but that US President Barack Obama told
him on the phone he would be getting. Do you not get why the US image
is yet again mud in Iraq? Iraqis were hoping for a change with the exit
of Bush and the arrival of Barack. They just found another liar and
another manipulator.Let's
leap ahead to 2012 when the press decided to whore big time for Nouri.
As the latter half of the year rolled around, Nouri began declaring
that the government wasn't working. Therefore, he stated, it was time
to end the power-sharing. And all the little whores and all their whore
friends pretended to discuss this. But their starting point was that
day.There
whores who deliberately and repeatedly lie for Nouri. It doesn't
matter what he wants, he signed a contract agreeing to a power-sharing
government. That's a detail the bulk of the press just never find time
to include in their reports. These are not minor points. This is exactly why Iraqis are protesting. And
it's not that difficult to understand. It can also be done a lot
quicker. If I had done it quicker, we'd have 1000 e-mails tomorrow
insisting, for example, that Barack wasn't involved. That's why we've
included the excerpts from real time.

We do need to again note John Barry's "'The Engame' Is A Well Researched, Highly Critical Look at U.S. Policy in Iraq" (Daily Beast):Washington has little political and no military influence
over these developments [in Iraq]. As Michael Gordon and Bernard
Trainor charge in their ambitious new history of the Iraq war, The Endgame,
Obama's administration sacrificed political influence by failing in
2010 to insist that the results of Iraq’s first proper election be
honored: "When the Obama administration acquiesced in the questionable
judicial opinion that prevented Ayad Allawi's bloc, after it had won the
most seats in 2010, from the first attempt at forming a new government,
it undermined the prospects, however slim, for a compromise that might
have led to a genuinely inclusive and cross-sectarian government."

Yeah,
Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor wrote a whole book about how Iraq
ended up where it is. And what was the response to that? As Ava and I pointed out last year in "TV: Media continued fail:"Equally curious is who you don't see. Gwen Ifill doesn't know a damn
thing about foreign policy so asking her to moderate the segment was
laughable. Equally laughable was not going with a NewsHour foreign policy guest for the segment.
In fact, we're thinking of one in particular: Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times.
Gordon's appeared multiple times on The NewsHour. Strangely, he wasn't booked for the segment on foreign policy last week.
Why would that be?
If you're wondering, he's not suddenly press shy. To the contrary, he
has a new book to sell, one he co-wrote with Bernard E. Trainor, The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. The book came out Tuesday.
Generally, that means you can expect to see and hear Gordon all over PBS
and NPR. Strangely, that has not been the case. No NPR coverage last
week of the book. No come on The NewsHour for a discussion. Frontline loved
to have him on in the past but now now. Charlie Rose? He has appeared
12 times in the last ten years on Rose's PBS and Coca Cola program.
But he was no where to be found last week.
Did Gordon show up at the PBS office party loaded on booze with little Gordon hanging out of his fly?
No, he did something far worse than that.
He dared to criticize Barack -- the ultimate media faux pas.

I'm
not a Michael Gordon groupie. Most of the time when his name pops up
here -- check the archives -- I'm calling him out. He co-wrote an
important book worth noting (The Endgame) but it was too
uncomfortable for NPR and PBS. Now they were fine -- and probably still
are -- booking him to promote war on Iran. But telling some truth
about Iraq? They didn't want to know him. Before that book, you
couldn't escape him on NPR and PBS -- and I groaned through every one of
those appearances. But when he finally had something to say that
really mattered? Public television and public radio suddenly lost his
number.It's not unlike, for example, if you lie to try to start a war in Syria, getting a promotion at NPR -- but that's a tale Ava and I'll share on Sunday at Third. Reporters whore not out of the love of whoring but because they make money by whoring.You
need to grasp that because a pattern emerges. It's not by accident
that the western media keeps getting the story wrong and keeps failing
to inform. At all levels, over and over, we see a refusal to honestly
discuss or report on Iraq. I don't care for Colin Freeman (Telegraph of London) but a friend at his paper called and pointed out "gunmen" or "assailants" wasn't used in Colin's latest.
He called the people who 'seized' their own town "Sunni guerrillas."
Yes, that is an improvement. So we'll link and we'll even note his
first paragraph:With civil war now raging in Syria, and post-Arab Spring governments
taking their first unsteady steps in Egypt and Libya, it’s all too easy
to forget the unfinished business that is Iraq. The tenth anniversary of
the operation to unseat Saddam Hussein went barely noticed in the West
last month, where neither the pro-war or anti-war camps seem
particularly keen on to dwell on it. For some, it's a fiasco best
forgotten altogether, while for others, it's time to move on now that
the basics have been achieved: a dictator toppled, American and British
troops withdrawn, and the trappings of a democratic government in place,
even if it still suffers from corruption and authoritarianism.Now,
wait a second, you say, there were all those pieces. No. As we noted
in real time those pieces weren't about Iraq. They had nothing to do
with the suffering children, with the poverty, with the ongoing
protests. They were "I paid attention in 2003 so let me pretend like
these old observations are fresh and new." It was about their grudge
f**k against Bully Boy Bush passed off as Iraq commentary. If you ever
doubted it, check out the over-praised Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. Drum links to the Los Angeles Times on the slaughter or Hawija Tuesday and then, after a lengthy excerpt, this is what Drum actually writes:This is all Obama's fault, amiright? George Bush—currently enjoying a
sudden resurgence of love from conservatives this week—was right on the
verge of working everything out and bringing peace and harmony to Iraq
when Obama was elected and ruined everything. That's the story I've been
hearing for the past couple of years from the neocon rump, anyway.You
stupid piece of s**t. I hope that's clear enough for Kevin Drum. Over
50 protesters died. And what you have to offer is partisan bulls**t?
You should be ashamed to show your face in public. Alsumaria noted
yesterday that Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) has
announced 50
activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault. 50 people are
dead, 110 are injured and you don't say one damn word about them? You
are disgusting and inhumane.

Oh, I forget, Kevin Drum supported the illegal war. Today he's at Mother Jones
and whines about neocons. But in 2003, Kevin Drum was a War
Cheerleader. He didn't give a damn about Iraqis then and he doesn't
now. So, yes, Colin Freeman's right about the lack of explorations on
Iraq last month.Kristin Deasy (Global Post) should slice of a piece of the shame pie
before Drum finishes it all. Her nonsense is mismash of half-facts and
a lousy timeline. This gets to what we were talking about this morning.
The press re-sets the clock for Nouri. Doesn't matter that the alarm
went off, for example, with the slaughter of Hawija -- the Nouri
al-Maliki ordered slaughter, he commands those forces and he sent them
there. Doesn't matter that he spent last week verbally attacking the
protesters in speeches around Iraq (until he was greeted with cries of
"Liar! Liar!" and forced to retreat to Baghdad). She has the nerve to
say that Nouri's calling for peace (the headline, in fact screams it).
So after he set fire to the village, he hollered "Someone call 9-11?"
Is that it, Kristin?This
is what the bulk of the press does repeatedly with Nouri. They strip
away the background for whatever happens in Iraq so he is never
responsible. That's why the fact that violence has increased since 2011
isn't ever connected by the press to Iraq not having a Minister of
Defense, a Minister of Interior or a Minister of National Security.
These are posts that Nouri is supposed to nominate people for. He has
refused to do so in order to have control over those posts and the
federal police and the military. (Why? Because his paranoia always sees
a coup.) Over 400 dead last month, it may reach 500 this month.
Violent deaths. World Bulletin reports
92 deaths on Tuesday and Wednesday. And these positions aren't filled
so Nouri's in charge of them. At what point is he held accountable by
the press for that? Apparently never. This was on display today at the US State Dept press briefing.
With all the violence rolling Iraq right now, you'll be happy to know
Iraq came up. At the very end. With a question about oil. That's
where the press is at, never forget it.The western press. If you go to Lebanon, for example, you'll find the editorial board of The Daily Star hasn't been cowed:

Maliki’s government has done little to resolve long-standing disputes
over the relationship of the Kurdish areas of the country to the
central government in Baghdad; the Iraqi authorities also have a
long-festering relationship with the Sunni
political community. A vice president from that community, Tareq
Hashemi, was officially charged in late 2011 with involvement in terror
attacks, and was obliged to flee to Kurdistan, which highlights the
dismal state of national affairs.But the horrific violence that has erupted over the past few days in
several Iraqi cities should serve as a reminder that the Arab world
isn’t the same place as it was at the beginning of 2011. The sectarian
and other fault lines were there before, but when Iraqi government
forces respond to public protests by using bullets and helicopters, they
have acted in the same, inflexible and violent way that has been used
by authoritarian Arab regimes.Alsumaria adds
that former Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi declared today that the
government has failed with regards to politics, security and public
service and that the people are hostages of revenge and violence
stemming from this failure. He decried the assault on the protesters in
Hawija and said the country is in grave danger. Adel Abdul-Mahdi was
vice president for two terms. He resigned, summer 2011, in the middle
of his second term. The Shi'ite politician announced his disgust with
Nouri's failure to keep his 100 day promise to end corruption and gave
that as his reason for resigning.Thank
goodness for the Middle East press which shows more bravery and truth
than the alleged free press of western society. It is because of this
kind of push back, especially in Arabic media, that Nouri's had to back
down. As Mohammad Sabah (Al Mada) reports today, Nouri's had to drop his attacks on the dead in Hawija and stop calling them "terrorists." Hou Qiang (Xinhua) 'reports,' "The Iraqi cabinet decided Tuesday to hold the provincial
elections in the Sunni provinces of Anbar and Nineveh on July 4, after
they were delayed for security reasons, state-run television reported
Tuesday." Did they? Reporting would require noting that it's
the responsibility of the IHEC to set the dates. Reporting would
require so much more than Xinhua -- or other outlets -- have offered. The United Nations issued a statement today which includes:
24 April 2013 – The top United Nations official in Iraq today
expressed his disappointment at the Government’s decision to postpone
until early July Governorate Council elections in two western provinces,
reportedly due to security concerns.
Polls in Anbar and Ninewa, set to have taken place along with other
provincial elections on 20 April, were pushed back until 4 July. The Economist notes today:In the provinces of al-Anbar and Nineveh, where Sunnis predominate
and where anti-government protests have raged since December, the
postponement of voting may help keep unpopular local politicians allied
with Mr Maliki in power. But the government in Baghdad has become
increasingly cut off from Iraq's restless provinces, literally as well
as politically. Army roadblocks on the road from Fallujah, west of the
capital, routinely prevent its residents from leaving their city.

The slaughter in Hawija continues to dominate events in Iraq. NINA quotes
Iraqiya MP Falah al-Naqib stating, "Since Iraq is still under Chapter
VII that means the UN should play a bigger role, especially after what
happened in Hawija." All Iraq News reports
Kurdish MP Latif Mustafa held a press conference today and declared,
"The recent events in Hawija approved that the Premier, Nouri al-Maliki,
represents a danger on Iraq." He outlined Hawija events, "What
happened in Hawija exceed the red limits of the government where Maliki
announced the emergency condition and this a constitutional breach and
the second breach is deploying the army inside the cities without the
approval of the parliament. The third breach is using the army for
attacking the citizens since the demonstrations represent an internal
issue and the police can deal with them." Don't hold your breath
waiting for AFP or Jane Arraf to ever note those basics. Things like
the law, they don't interest AFP and Arraf and make it harder to spin
for Nouri. MP Mustafa summed up, "Maliki became a danger on Iraq and
we should investigate him at the parliament."

RT speaks
with Westchester University Professor Lawrence Davidson who pins the
violence on the the illegal war ["Since 2003, thousands, tens of
thousands people have died as a
part of this sectarian violence. We (US) opened Pandora’s box and
we could not close it even when we were there."] and he notes, "Maliki
government's reputation has already hit bottom. What we got is a
government that is determined to maintain its position and crush
opposition, particularly Sunni politicians."

The government of Iraq, installed under occupation and maintained after
the US retreat, has committed a new massacre against peaceful
protesters in the town of Hawija. The forces used and the way it was
achieved reminds us of the Fallujah massacre at the beginning of the
occupation.
Although towns in six departments are protesting in the same way, the
government chose to attack this town, to make it an example for other
larger cities. They attack it because the peaceful protests are a
success.
At dawn, protesters in Hawija were encircled by forces in great number,
ground and air, their tents burnt while they were unarmed inside. Those
who tried to escape were fired at or crushed by military vehicles.
There is news that even the wounded are being killed. A wave of
solidarity is mounting in reaction while armed resistance movements, in
support of the peaceful protests until now, are moving to block a
government escalation of violence.
The reasons of the protest are well known: 10 years of targeted
discrimination and oppression of every kind. Their peaceful protest has
been ongoing since four months without an answer to their human rights
demands. The government chose the second day after local elections to
punish in cold blood the protesters, announcing it will continue its
policies whatever the result of the election would be.
This massacre is not only a crime against humanity; it is genocide. It
is neither a civil conflict nor a sectarian one. It is a crime of a
government against a national group, the Sunnis, who would vote against
its politicsand who demand to stop hangings, campaigns of mass arrests,
systematic torture, unfair justice and false accusations, to stop the
discrimination in jobs, in education, in services, making their regions
and cities large prisons encircled by military checkpoints and towering
walls.
We are in solidarity with the peaceful protesters and their just
demands. We call on all governments and human rights organisations to
condemn this massacre and to unite efforts to bring Nouri Al-Maliki and
all those responsible before international justice, not only to punish
individually, but to stop the state terrorism and to prevent a larger
violence — like that used in Syria — that would endanger peace in the
whole region and entail very heavy civilian losses.
We join calls for the end of the fascist Maliki regime; the immediate
departure of the head of the army command, the minister of interior,
Maliki, his government, and the fascist ruling party. The international
community, the UN and relevant bodies, should endorse the same end.
We express our support for the Iraqi people struggling against state terror and salute the solidarity of Iraqis with Hawija.

Abdul Ilah Albayaty
Hana Al Bayaty
Ian Douglas

Abdul Ilah Albayaty is an Iraqi political analyst. Hana Al Bayaty
is an author and political activist. IanDouglas is a specialist in the
geopolitics of the Arab region and has taught at universities in the US,
UK, Egypt and Palestine.

In related news, Iraqi Spring MC reports
that defections from the military are taking place in Hawija. After
the events, that's hardly a surprise and that's before you factor in
what happened in Basra in 2008 when Nouri sent his forces there to
attack.

(Baghdad) – A striking increase in executions in Iraq
points out the failure of Iraq’s justice system to meet international
fair trial standards. The surge in judicial killings came shortly after
the government conceded that justice system reforms are desperately
needed.

Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani has announced a series of
reforms since January 2013, in response to widespread protests in which
demonstrators demanded reforms to the ailing justice system, but it is
unclear whether any of the promises have been carried out. Instead of
any action on these reforms, Justice Minister Hassan al-Shimmari
announced in mid-March that the ministry would execute 150 people in the
coming days. At least 50 people have been executed in the last month.
“The government seems to think that the best way to combat the increase
in violence and terror that Iraq has suffered since the beginning of
the year is with yet more state killing and injustice,” said Sarah Leah Whitson,
Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The concurrent escalation
in attacks and in executions makes clear that its brutal tactics are not
working.”